The proposed Meharry Alcohol Research Collaborative (MARC) is a 3 year planning project designed to develop a collaborative research partnership between Meharry Medical College (Meharry), the oldest Historically African American Medical School in the country (since 1876), and a research research-intensive institution, the Center for Addiction and Behavioral Health Research (CABHR) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. This proposal seeks to continue an established Meharry-CABHR collaboration (since 2000) to promote the following long terms goals: 1) to create alcohol research readiness in the Department of Psychiatry and among other collaborating faculty at Meharry and local universities, 2) to prepare Meharry faculty to perform independent alcohol research and to compete successfully for federally funded research grants in this field, and 3) create and disseminate alcohol research data and findings to the professional and non-professional community. To meet these long-term goals, the MARC program proposes the development of an Administrative Infrastructure to facilitate the development of high quality federally funded research on issues related to health disparities, particularly in terms of minority alcohol use and treatment of alcohol abuse and dependence. This infrastructure will support 3 core activities: a) Training Core: Institute a structured program of training for junior and senior Meharry faculty, Residents, and both pre- and post-doctoral students to increase capability in areas of research methodology relevant to alcohol and alcoholism, health services research methodology, statistical methodology, prevention and intervention research designs, and culturally competent measurement, b) Research Core: Providing support and mentoring for alcohol related pilot research projects specifically relevant to Meharry and local community needs, and c) Outreach Dissemination Core: Development of methods to disseminate alcohol research information to those serving the local minority community, including both professional (i.e., health and social service) and non-professional (e.g., clergy) providers. The ultimate goal of this application is to develop a solid program of research on minority alcohol research. At the end of the three-year project, success will be measured by the number of successful Rand K-series applications in addition to articles published in refereed journals. [unreadable] [unreadable]